With April behind us, we conducted a deep dive into exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows over the month and year-to-date (YTD) periods. Flows measure the net movement of cash into and out of investment vehicles, such as mutual funds and ETFs. We analyzed flows to gain insight on investor demand and sentiment surrounding asset classes, sectors, and other segments of markets.

Broad Asset Class Flows

Following a global market sell-off in March, risk assets surged in April, with most equity categories posting double-digit gains. Easing geopolitical tensions and lower oil prices helped stabilize sentiment, allowing investors to ref...
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Gold’s behavior since the escalation of conflict in the Middle East has been, at first glance, counterintuitive. Periods of geopolitical stress typically push investors toward gold as a safe haven. Instead, gold prices have struggled to gain any sort of consistent traction, even amid one of the most severe global energy disruptions in decades. Understanding why requires stepping back and recognizing that gold does not sit neatly in any one asset category. It actually straddles several as gold simultaneously functions as a commodity, a reserve asset, and a currency surrogate. That overlapping identity is important, because it means the r

In Q1 2026, I stepped into the role less of an interviewer and more of an investigator, sitting across the table from 35 portfolio management teams covering mutual funds, ETFs, and SMAs in large cap growth, large blend, and large value. Each team was asked the same eight questions — no leading prompts, no room to dodge — so the evidence was clean and comparable. As the answers piled up, patterns began to surface: repeated narratives told by different voices, subtle tells that revealed where conviction was genuine versus rehearsed. Outliers stood out like fingerprints at a crime scene — views that broke from consensus, either

In investing, the goal is to find assets that appreciate. That can be accomplished in different ways. One way is to find businesses that aren’t growing very fast but can be purchased at a low enough valuation that the investment can perform well. Another way to find potentially good investments is by identifying businesses (or groups of businesses that make up an index) that are growing rapidly but the market underestimates that growth. Some refer to this as “growth at a reasonable price” investing. Whatever style of growth an investor might pursue, it’s clear that finding growth that the market doesn’t expect ma